


Love like Ghosts

by Lacquiparle



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29203485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacquiparle/pseuds/Lacquiparle
Summary: Hardy recollects what happened during that fateful night in Sandbrook.For Valentine's Day fic-a-thon.
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	Love like Ghosts

Love like Ghosts

I.

Under the stars, the cab drove to Sandbrook. Exhausted, Hardy pressed his forehead against the glass of the car window, his eyes momentarily shutting. Flashes of light buzzed against his eyelids.

“Running from a woman?” The cabby asked, but Hardy didn’t respond. For a moment, he wondered if the cab driver’s comment was true. 

Hardy didn’t know what he was escaping from or running toward. An endless figurative highway with routes unavoidable.

He gazed upwards, toward the night sky with its vast array of terrestrial wonders. 

II.

_Go to sleep, Miller._

Restless nights, he recalled the memory. Rolling onto his side, her gauche charm at easing the tension. Rumors spread far and wide through the community; whispers about their illicit affair canvassed over dinner tables. 

He didn’t want to think about it, so his mind numbed over an old image of Claire. Whenever he was ill of heart over Tess, he recollected this image of Claire to dull his senses. A fabled picture he had concocted the way some might create images to lull themselves to sleep. 

He felt nothing toward Claire. Tess was another story, an old hope or a bit of nostalgia he clung helplessly to. Whenever his heart ached, he remembered only the good times. Dave was a fiction. 

He didn’t know how he felt about Miller. 

_Ellie_ , he mouthed to himself. The tip of his tongue rolled over the roof of his mouth into the abstraction of her name. The word felt foreign. 

Several instances stood out to him. He couldn’t help recalling when Miller told him about Dirty Brian asking her out. What a strange moment of shared humor. 

And then telling her about Joe. Finding Joe in the Miller house, deliberately walking through the house with its slugs leisurely promenading over the carpeted floor. The memory of Mexican food and the Miller’s company flooded his olfactory senses. Their laughter in his ears.

In the motel bed, his hands tucked under his cheek, he felt something touch his back and he jumped at the pressure. 

“Sir?” Came the voice. 

He rubbed his eyes and rolled over to see Miller’s eyes peeking through the darkness, the motel duvet tucked under her arms. The minute shapes on her pajamas standing out against the patchwork of the darkness. 

“Are you awake?” She asked.

He sighed, blearily, wanting to immediately roll away from her again. “What do you think?” 

He sensed her smile, but there was something else, so he tilted his head back over his shoulder. Just a peak. It looked like she had been crying or she was about to cry. 

“Want me to sleep in the car?”

“Don’t be daft,” she grumbled under her breath, wiping under her eyes. 

Silently, he looked at her. He didn’t know what it was, the emotion percolating inside his heart that felt drawn toward her. Fondness? Irritation? Adoration? Something unknown to him? Each moment he was with her, he wanted to touch her or to soothe the raw frustration that gnawed at those bloody wounds that still pestered her. 

Sighing, he rotated over, the cheap motel bed jarring under his shifting weight, Ellie’s russet doe eyes peering up at him in the dark. 

He reached over and brushed a few strands of hair away from her face. Her eyes followed his fingers, then drawn to his eyes, gazed directly at him. 

“What?” She asked. 

He didn’t know what he felt, but whatever was warming the inside of his body, he liked it. Liked the depth of it. The feel of it. The way it drew him to her.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips against her mouth, and then drew away. Her eyes remained open, perplexed.

She wasn’t like Tess or a fabricated cooled image like Claire. He wasn’t sure what Miller was.

She crinkled her brows and studied his face, and his action, momentarily. 

Then she snorted. And laughed. 

“What was that?” She asked, but he didn’t answer, stung by her insensitivity. 

He just rolled away from her, the irresistible sensation inside him growing, a hot blight.

“Sorry,” she muttered, touching his shoulder with her fingers. He didn’t respond to her, armored once again. “Hardy.” He sensed the teasing returned to her voice, this time playful and gentle. 

When he rolled over, she rested the palm of her hand flat on his chest, its weight registering with his head and his heart simultaneously. When she leaned down to kiss him, his heart blundered until he heard her whisper, _sh_. 

III.

Hardy tried not to think about Miller after Sandbrook. 

At night, he conjured images of someone else, but his dreams were haunted, and even in his subconscious Miller tormented him anyway. 

He imagined several alternative endings. Miller rejecting him. Ellie loving him. Hardy leaving Broadchurch.

Uncertain of what to do, he entertained the possibility of abandoning all hope and leaving Broadchurch. 

In the end, he didn’t say goodbye.


End file.
